More Stories from the September 30, 2000 issue
- Health & Medicine
Gene Tied to Heightened Diabetes Risk
People with three particular variations within the gene that encodes the protein calpain-10 face triple the risk of getting type II diabetes.
- Earth
Model offers grounds for midwestern quakes
A new computer model may help explain how earthquakes can happen at fault zones located far from the edges of a tectonic plate.
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Memory echoes in brain’s sensory terrain
The process of remembering an event reactivates brain regions that were involved in initially seeing or hearing the event.
- Health & Medicine
Insulin inaction may hurt even nondiabetics
Flawed insulin activity may lead to blood changes that foster atherosclerosis, even in people who don't have diabetes.
- Astronomy
Craft finds where sun’s corona gets its hots
New findings may help explain an enduring solar riddle: Although the sun's outer atmosphere lies thousands of kilometers above the visible surface of the sun, it's about 1,000 times hotter.
- Plants
Glitch splits hermaphrodite flowers
In a newly proposed scenario, polyploidy may trigger perfectly good hermaphrodite plants to evolve gender forms.
- Physics
One-molecule chemistry gets big reaction
Carrying out a widely used chemical reaction on one molecule at a time, researchers demonstrate unprecedented control of molecular behavior and, possibly, the ability to make novel nanotechnology devices and compounds that can't be created with ordinary chemistry.
- Computing
Virtual stampede sees faces in crowd
A new computer model based on particle interactions suggests ways to prevent a panicked crowd from stampeding.
- Physics
Electron breakup? Physics shake-up
A controversial theoretical proposal that challenges more than a century of theory and experiments suggests that loose electrons in liquid helium may break into pieces, dubbed electrinos.
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Abused kids lose emotional bearings
Physical abuse and neglect appear to undermine preschoolers' emotional development in different ways.
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Brains generate a body of feeling
Happiness, sadness, and other basic emotions activate unique networks of brain areas that track the body's internal status.
- Chemistry
New solution for kitchen germs
Acidic electrolyzed water appears to kill foodborne germs more effectively than a bath of dilute bleach.
- Chemistry
Toxic runoff from plastic mulch
Pesticide runoff from tomato fields covered with sheets of plastic can kill fish, clams, and other aquatic life.
- Chemistry
Germ-killing plastic wrap
Scientists have developed biodegradable plastics that release natural germ-killing agents onto the foods wrapped inside.
- Earth
The Making of a Grand Canyon
Carving this beloved hole in the ground may not have been such a long-term project.
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